Oh that it should come to this
The Earth war — part 14
It is not scientific to say I am a federalist, neither is it to suppose Lovejoy doesn’t care about ideas as such, but politics and science most stand separated and apart from each other. If you feel this series is too long, by all means read some of the earlier ones (i.e earlier other series about related subjects all revolving around the claim that we can establish ‘an ecology of mind’ i.e a better wholist mode of thinking which can put us in better tune with reality and complexity and nature), the themes are mixed but are situated inside the MIND of renaissance logic. Considering how I pull on the lever of two cultures, one of Rome and one of Greece, and my promotion of Greece might lead to the wrong conclusions. The thought which replicates ‘subsidiarity’ in Church politics of the EU seeks to look at history via the categories (of our thought). This thought might look like spinozism or leibnitzean speculations, and might lead to the promotions of FEDERALISM. But on the one hand feudalism or FEDERALISM are not all that easy to explain or scientifically explain, like democracy or even the hate word capitalism (as e.g. cf. J.K. Galbraith, e.g. his last small but efficient book at Penguin books THE ECONOMICS OF INNOCENT FRAUD)they are all fringe phenomena (cf. Andersson). The first idea about this might be grasped if we consider A.O. Lovejoy as he institutes the idea of a science of the history of ideas (which was not new in terms of the history of thought, his stroke of genius was to say he had a new take on this age-old science); what he says is it is NOT (and this is important) the ideas but rather the attitudes of thinkers and periods, and to an extent combines of these ideas in new constallation(s) which interests him (cf. Lovejoy 1936, Harvard UP). I am a follower of McLuhan and so I emphasise what I refer to as the dependent or systems-logic of history, I also use the expression REnaissance to stake out the tenets that McLuhan wrote about, of the Medium as imposing its own logic via the printing press and the telephone and all the rest of it, in word and deed Marshall McLuhan is a remnant of the surrealist movement, as Mckenna describes it; he puts the modern logic at work not on Mediaeval tracts (in which he takes his start and ‘fons et origo’ as a scholar, as in fountainhead), not on the writings of early modern Tudor poets (which was his dissertation), but on James crazypills Joyce — and by extension on the modern world, and not only that but on ‘media’ (i.e. books, radio, telecommunication etc also intimating the global village concept of an all-embracing computer culture). This super-local and super-unlocal analysis is akin to Claude Lévi-Strauss, who imagines that all of human myth was somehow analysable (having thereby universalist claims). (see afterword for a support of universal myth-logical concepts, their uses and abuses). I myself sometimes find it strange how super-modern things are at times sitting side-by-side with ultra conservative ones — thinking in terms of system allows for this cluttered way of thinking. Is not French literature very much a product of the surreal? Yes, and none can in his right mind deny it. Yet this surreal trend called surrealism, breaks into its almost opposite; that of functionalist ideas in industry and architecture. Sartre and Camus or Cocteau are indeed children of surrealism whether they like it or no.
It is a large raft, a raft that wiggles its way on a steamy late spring flood on the river
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The citique or critical comment of ‘culture’, can we do such a thing? (see also afterword) How do we create stories? These threads of life which in all honesty we cannot know let alone tell of, or very well write of — the solution here is to accept life is transcient but also that men, having invented scripture and scribe, are intent on using it aimlessly as a tool. The tools of the mind are extensions which seen from a certain point of view help us to undo our own culture. Retail seems dead and buried even, at some juncture the base case is the farmer selling from his barn or the bakery in the city square, all the rest is extensions, regulations. That this is so is argued by one proponent of Toffler’s namely Charles Hugh-Smith who says the internet (see also Rifkin, the zero-marginal cost society) will create amongst other things ‘the nearly free university’ that we can become prosumers as Toffler assumes is a pipe-dream but a very good one, one to embrace I suppose. The case for stagflation is a good one, on grounds of thermodynamics alone, but is the global village headed for disaster? Culture even unto itself is a story or a sequence of events, if men depend on other men as Yuval Harari says we all depend on collective super-ideas, for a kind of reason retail apocalypse is not the end although if we compare it to the Roman army, it was a dead end yet died with the host — in the Roman case distribution of retribution, on the shelves of retail stores cases of beer. Alvin Toffler suggests that the factory is dead too, I wonder, wonder, wonder — what can we make of all of this?
Illusions — From inside the army the generals and soldiers considered themself terrific, but by the time of Diocletian the slow changes meant that this distorted view was strongly biased. 1 The army allied itself with the emperor, 2 It usurped the powers of the emperor, and 3 most emperors in the end were soldiers. The departmentalisation of a society makes us blind to our biases, we measure it in relation to what we think not to the totality. The shift from Augustus Octavian all the way to Augustine the saint is this distortion, yet a strange change with many stages we often try to make ‘logic’ — the senate before Augustus can be said to be very similar to the almost feudal and local emperor by the time of Augustine who reigned in Milan and was more than happy to use the increased leverage of bishops (he cared little for Christianity). The change is in some sense subtle at a low by the time of Cicero and at a complete low by the 400s AD — the emperor acted like some renaissance overlord or local prince, emperor in name only. We are often as Brown shows unwilling to see and accept change, we try to conceal it, rationalise it. Out of a big crazy meltdown was bred something new; reverting to the social war (cf. Appian) the total obliteration of the celtic culture, was a fair price to pay, just another externality (cf.Tom Holland on Caesar), or perhaps not…(see further part 15)
Human societies can even paste over climate change or demographics for we defend the system at all cost — this I think rather than Harari´s appeal to science is a salvation, namely starting to undo our stupid techno-reliance. In Sapiens harari points to the dangers here, but is his basic structure at heart critical of our culture — isn’t he promoting more of the same? It is often forgotten that by the time of Justinian a global climate change had descended on the Western world (and beyond) which we do not think about, we sometimes cursorily mention the Justinian plague as if it was some trifle. Cicero thought (I think rightly) balance was achievable by looking to the past, a stoic logic was applied in his mind to these matters. The seldom appreciated idea in systems is their quirkiness, namely female bears are cuddely and all, well until they aren’t. The ideas (of Cicero) were as in a freak of nature siezed upon by Caesar who created a true principate of sorts, it is though likely the altar he was given by the senate was an allusion to his soon to be consumated gruesome death. The grave is a kind of altar, a portal to the rebirth of the soul — at least to the mind of Simonides the Greek poet.
That generations such as Kirkegaard, Stagnelius, Herder, Godwin, even Napoleon come out of a concern they all share is true — a time-stamp. Herder and Godwin here are too early, but Mary Woolstonecraft the younger is not. What we should investigate is the post-kantian, the revolt against reason.
It is not how Justinian did not see the catastrophe for he and all his contemporaries live through it, it is how letters and culture is also a blinder — McLuhan attacks writing itself — our contemporary world do not bend these rules. We forgot Justinian and the causal relation to reality (climate change).
Language as we have noted on the strange inversion of you with thou starting in Shakespeare’s day, has a deeper meaning for our purposes. The structure of sentences are like the printed books or pamphlets — set pieces. The words on the other are unsettled ‘types’ in the big printing press of the eternal mind. For it was babel we built, after all, let’s admit it. This particular see-saw is in the deep structure of language qua-language. I have played devil’s advocate in so far as the Greeks are different from the Romans — but this is an older and deeper issue still visible as we might imagine in all language(s). The two opposites in this struggle make English look similar to some click-languages in that they have (some atleast) some 40 clicking sounds. In English the strangulation of grammar was to come out as proliferation of vocabulary, as an analogue then to ‘the 40 click-sounds’… To understand this idea we need only look at Phoenician language and Hebrew, and indeed Sumerian, in these two (or three) sound make up a concept, this is similar in Arab. In a word where we throw off the yoke (zygon in Greek) of the alphabet and imagine a general ‘language’ in and of itself (much like the followers of Chomsky look for a general ‘priciple’ I look instead for a form if you will of language in very general terms) we see two principles at perpetual war 1) the syntactic principle which states that set pieces of content(s) cross pathes — the end-point of it is English, or 2) the semitic idea which looks very pictographical and which states that the bits are ever shiftable, in Sumerian an expression or concept expressed as sound A plus B, can be expressed as B plus A — this may in fact explain how Sumer and Egypt went down, we call this principle the analytic principle. Stangely the Romans show this quality rather than the Greeks and some linguist will have to figure this out, for in principle the categories 1 and 2 should apply in reverse (in theory).
Hang-ups of generations
In the generation after Godwin overly relying on ideas was very common, to make a pun it was utilitarian. The complete chaos of the religious wars were as yet unheard of in Bacon’s day, the chaos was metaphysical in that the logic of religion was breaking down (so that Kant could reconstitute it). Any thing can lead to extensionalism; how about consumer-surrealism? Merleau Ponty appears in hindsight like some Bysshe Shelley in philosophy — I know this is a paradox - why else mention it? One might call men out as political animals, they are not aware of their boundedness, and yet this applies to us all, penned-up animals as we are. This idea of ‘wholism’ is in a sense more structural in the sense that Claude Lévi-Strauss attaches to it, less that of a functionalist/statist /political — structuralist. Let´s not forget that.
Godwin then lived before the fall, but when did Cicero live? I would say before the fall, so falls occur and reoccur in history; there was great imbalance in Cicero’s day, so his solutions are less insightful than they seem they were the order of the day. BUT CAN WE SAY AS MUCH FOR POSITIVISM, is this insidious fallacy recurring over and over, and over…?
As Claude Lévi-Strauss writes his ideas are applicable to ethnography, but have increasingly been applied to modern society — is this possible? The attack on ‘meaning’ in history is strong in Popper (as in Ponty who uses phenomenology to outdo it) this attack in commendable. That I use history as a guide (or that we do) might seem odd then for I seem to love destroying my own builds. The crux here is if we can escape meaning. Inside generations I think not, we are herd animals and should be. It’s who we are in fact.
Claude Lévi-Strauss then should not be applied to modern society yet I insist on it, we might say that history is not science the reason being that things repeat — bounce up and down if you will, as in a pattern. Kropotkin is in a sense confusing these things (likely to our great benefit). The risk as well is McLuhan was right and our MIND did change, and so EGO became ICON. He was wrong in his apparent optimism, I take a more sombre perspective. This is in fact the answer to all of the questions of this series — but I promise to unwrap this gift as we move on. Namely the the danger is the icon as danger.
or more importantly
or rather even more important
Russell and Queen Mab
Styx or no Styx this is not the question, these are picture allusions. But following Lévi-Strauss we might assume the idea that we think in these pictures, use them as a guide in our everyday understanding.
Scholars forever have perched on how to interpret religion or even orthodoxy, and earlierly on the othodoxy-orthopraxy debate inside religion itself. These dichotomies are useful, but the usage is wrong. Protestant religion is often described as orthopraxic, catholicism as orthodoxic (faith above all). In light of complexity they become toy notions. One could easily argue either case.
Truth is a pointless concept even unless we specify what kind of truth. Inside the truth C.P. Snow points to we end up inside Bacon´s older idea of ‘right reason’ — but there is a shallowness here one we fail to find in the thoughts of Bertrand Russell. Inside relativism of the systems-variety which I defend we think and act, and act and think, and think and on, and on. A never-stop one-man-show of activity. This our sinful life cares little for ‘dichotomy’ yet inside thought such notions are useful and are not destroyed by it in terms of their use as words. We might think of this in terms of a balance of things, now all of a sudden concepts taken as concepts are relative to other ones — as I have stated elsewhere (PRO and REactive systems — here at Medium.com) we need both, i.e both the world of narrow-minded science and that of relativism. These are of necessity half-assed renderings of a deeper philosophical reality. Mowing on.
T H E — I C O N s
Thucydides was a believer in the word, in a sense Tacitus used it to express its limitations, Thucydides expresses its possibilities — Seneca is not optimistical on man’s prospects, that in life we prefer illusions, and then if men love these lies, why not give it to them? Theatre it seems was a safe haven to NERO or CALIGULA, DOMITIAN should in this context not be omitted since both Nero and the later Domitian shared APOLLO as their patron god, and Caligula though a lover of the military found playing the soldier as a post more aimiable than marching in the field.
Caligula though is misinterpreted as is Nero or Tiberius, in Mary Beard we find a leaning to the emperor as a sign of the times, these mad emperors are much more a result of crazyvill Rome than of their insanity, so Domitian is saved even more perhaps than these other-ones… despite his condemnation for ever (cf. R. Graves, I Claudius, and the BBC series of course).
Our time which seems so adamant about human freedoms of expression almost bordering on insanity, has lost touch with reality in very many ways. All freedom is a kind of unfreedom and it is possible this is what bothers Simone de Beauvoir. We can illustrate it thus (R. Hutchinson, The Beast Demystified, 1998, p.110) as Crowley met Clifford Bax in St Moritz.
Crowley asks : What is the date?
Bax : January 23rd.
Crowley : What is the year according to the Christian calendar?
Bax : Oh, ..nineteenhundred and five.
Crowley : Exactly, and in a thousand yrs from this moment, the world will be sitting in the sunset of Crowleyanity.
We have these freaks, our heroes, like Bowie who smoked to death or we might like Ulysses, the Raymond Chandlers are mere extensions…
Talking of the recurring hero is true as a positive in history, as Joseph Campbell shows — his rule of thumb in creative myth.
That Napoleon matters is not a lie, but in some sense he is a literary figure, on the ground so terribly important for all that would become that his birthday had to be celebrated in England lest they might have a revolt on their hands…
Much like we like to think of Greece as special we are in part wrong, the Illiad supposedly written by Homer has traits from Mesopotamia (the tripartite god-head, and the bigger structure of the cycles) and the Illiad unlike the Odyssey is older. The original ‘Illiad’ had many cycles, this is the Trojan cycles which we know of but do not have. The Illiad uses merely the second of these cyles, and either this is true or the Illiad/Trojan songs was broken up and part of it became the Odyssey. The Illiad is in many ways older in that it portrays the older days of an archaic (was it written even as the epic war itself happened? 1200 BC?) world of honour, in which as Homer sees the heroes let themselves heedlessly into battle — reminding us perhaps of Cuchulain (the great cattle-raid). Homer is silent but it shines through in his language that this war is pointless. The adventure is more important to the heroes than the tedium of ordinary life, this thing is a tragedy in itself. The hero Ulysses is more concerned over the details of psychology and can perhaps be said to belong to the shift into a new world where person matters more and trade was picking up and the slow growth of enterprise — this guy it seems is important to the Western mind, we like less Akillevs and more Ulysses if you will — yet Ulysses is a bit of a gangster as Lappalainen shows. It should be noted that the Agonauts are a kind of Herakles on water, as if every island is a small idyll or obstacle inside a haphazard track of the ship Argos which plays on both ‘quick’ and ’lazy’ hence dual mystical. Western societies are based on the shifting tides, and whatever the cause democracy as Daniel Bell shows is scale more than content, we might add it is not a form of government — the above cultural heritage hints that in fact democracy is merely the collective mind that tries to ‘explain’ the shaky foundations of the culture — there is no ideology here!!! It must be noted that much like Popper I embrace free speech, yet this my perspective is functionalist/ structuralist and might point to science reasons for our attitudes. This leaves us with a void; is all of history what Goethe made it out to be?
We should note how nobles in groups and alliances promoted the trader and rights of the farmer as against kings. In this process a number of tyrants so-called went out of their way to promote art and social conditions, Peisistratos was one of these. But in this relation he likely should be attacked as a usurper of religions at Euleusis, possibly taking a ride on religion for political reasons. This process or the mere fact of the location of Attica fomented a strong Athens in alliances with Ionia. On the opposite side of this we see Parmenides who was to flee such a tyrant, I will use this to discuss Popper. Now that Parmenides flees might be contested why he does so can be contested too.
Western societies are based on the shifting tides, or if Werner Sombart is right on ACQUISITIVENESS, and loves Ulysses more for better or worse. The reason we love him is an after-thought though — the REnaissance repeated the Romans and /OR Greeks, and we live in shock and awe ever since. The word dynamic change due to imbalances in our society which we can for some reason never let slip from our sights is a better way to describe the bigger picture of hegelian ups and downs— a freedom we once had? Whatever the cause democracy as Daniel Bell shows is scale more than content, we might add it is not a form of government — the above cultural heritage hints that in fact democracy is merely the collective mind that tries to ‘explain’ the shaky foundations of the culture — there is no ideology here!!! Projection if you will. It must be noted that much like Popper I embrace free speech, yet this my idiosyncratic perspective is functionalist/ structuralist and might point to science reasons for our attitudes. This leaves us with a void; is all of history what Goethe made it out to be? Is Napoleon really that ‘nice’ and if this is true, God help me!!!
The list provided in earlierly written parts over organisational structures might be structured with a new layer of complexity — SCHEMATIC ON ORGANISED RELIGION as provided previous.
Yes, the hour is dark, evil comes forth in the guise of good, a time of double talk
(Martin Luther King)
These are the end-times in so far as they are a time to reflect, not revel.
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FREEDOM OF INTERPRETATION
There is little reason not to fear the closed-loop of thinking as in the above which more or less abuses the word democracy, the words of Jean-Paul are those of a sane man if we compare with Goethe, but we have idealised these thinkers into believing romantic thinking is easily translatable — perhaps ONLY if we accept this limit of our historic reality can we see the need for looking into many and varied voices of ALL of the 18th century voices, Kant, Gibbon, Johnson, Boswell, Hume, Kant, Jean-Paul Richter, Goethe — consider this; Germany was at the forefront of science and philosophy in those days, but England and France were stronger at the end of the century. But this story is for next part (see part 15) — the takeaway being that Napoleon was not good nor bad and we can argue over him like we have done over Alexander the Great tree detroyer, why else read history if in it we were merely seeing as through a glass clear and simple, in fact Hegel smashes the ideals (see further). And add this; this is my take on history and just perhaps you have another angle …? It is also most possibly engineering which will add the critical solutions to the macro economic models, introducing energy and thermodynamic reality, no thing moves in a straight line.
The trident and Orion have been older threes in our past, the lines on Shivas forehead, waves?
The island of doctor Moreau is perhaps the fish Morue meaning cod, who knows? Imagine a doctor fish doing evil experiments on people, this seems non-convincing to the modern man who kills Mr/ Doctor >Fish by the boatload and with impunity — a new social science has this further idea to solve how men ‘swim’ inside a bowl called ecological systems (see further).
The appeal of science is opposite in Max Weber as in my key idea — C O N T A P U A L I S AT I O N — in the sense of ‘vagueness’ ; oh hallowed vagueness!
WHAT’S SO DARN SPECIAL WITH THE NUMBER THREE?
In Weber the idea of STEIGERING (best transl. is ‘aim’ or ‘sighting point’) was part of his formulation of the IDEAL TYPE. Inside his theory of power (in German AUKTORITÄT) there is that number three. In Galbraith too we have the compensatory, coercive and conditioned sources of power, surprise — they too are three… (let’s not get into the details) I’d like to argue the Romans had all of the three types inside their culture, so that no man might argue they ‘lacked’ some of Webers three ideal types (charizma, authority and bureaucratic/rational). In sum the Roman soldier was CONTRAPUALISED and yet see next part of this series to find out the relation to departmentalisation (or just call up the CIA). One way of explaining compartmentalisation is institutionalisation, add to it the attitude of the bureaucrat that this is below my paygrade, in the worst of cases then as Chomsky points to in his practical investigations there is no transparency and deliberate destruction of documents. Leaving this aside organisation is communication as well, the lack thereof can hurt the organisation itself, the worst case being if these organisations are ubiquitous hence propagating the idea of compartments to a wider world — an evil idea. This is a blurring of civil society into a megocracy if you will. Going back to democracy as modernity we can note the bigger time-scale also. The unsatisfactory truth of it so to speak if we take this leap is how I relate Joseph Tainter’s idea ‘investment in complexity’ to this my made-up category (contrapualisation), yet much like McLuhan’s hang-up or the mysterious ideas concerning the number three in Weber, this still helps no one understand contrapualisation, its a mystery…
It grants freedom of interpretation! That is the short answer. Then why use it? This section will be the appeal to contrapualisation as a scientific tool, but let us start in the real world; take another if unrelated word departmentalisation quite different from the word institutionalisation as noted in the film The Shawshank Redemption (based on a truish story it seems (Freeman, Robbins 1994). The film is concerned with the dark life inside the can, and one of the inmates is let loose having done his time only to kill himself, Freeman’s role or character explains; he was institutionalised…
Talking instead of the word COMPARTMENTALISATION and Toffler we can make a number of preliminary observations. Is retail compared in vain to the Romans? This idea we must defer to next part.. it is exciting to be alive after all!
THE ENDING OF THIS PART (see you in part 15)
p.s. and yes we must come back to how we sift the schematic of religions.
Thank you for reading this!
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Happiness HQ
